Ten years ago when I was trying to make a living and taking every opportunity possible, I always found that a difficult question to answer. Should I tell them I’m an opera singer, even though most of my money is made from teaching? How do I define myself even though I’m not where I want to be?

I want you to look at yesterday’s post about “why”. What did you say your beliefs were?

Now, based on those beliefs, make a statement about who you are. Again, word it in the first person:

I am a…

There are no limits and no rules to this exercise. If you have not found your niche yet, that’s fine, say what you would be ideally. As soon as you start to say you are something, your psychology will catch up with you.

I hope this series has been a helpful jumpstart towards your career goals. If you are interested in filling out the free guide, you can find it here.

Simon Sinek has a great TED Talk where he discusses the importance of this idea. I highly recommend watching it and taking notes. He also has a great book called Start With Why, elaborating on this idea.

Write down three “I believe…” statements in the first person. This will form your philosophy as an artist, and is an easy point of reference for yourself moving forward. The more focused you are on your “why?” the easier it will be to focus yourself in a few key areas so you can find your points of focus.

Next time we will discuss points of focus in your career.

If if you would like more information on my teaching, performances, or career building resources, please subscribe to my newsletter using the form at the bottom of the page.

Welcome back to my four-part career jumpstart series! In the first section, I talked about general goals. In this section I am going to talk about income goals. I think this is one of the most crucial steps in building an artistic career, and one that often gets overlooked.

This is a breakdown that I was taught in a class. Andrew Simonet also goes through a similar process in his Artists U workbook. The purpose of this exercise is to get you thinking differently about the cost-benefit of opportunities you may run across.

Set yourself an income goal to reach in ten years.

Word it like this:

I make $______________________ annually.

There are about 52 weeks in a year.

How many weeks a year do you want to take vacation?

52 weeks - # of weeks of vacation = ideal number of weeks working out of the year: _____________

Now, take your annual income goal number and divide that by the number of weeks per year.

Ideal number of working weeks/ideal annual income = weekly pay: ________

Now divide that by the number of hours you want to work per week.

Weekly pay/ideal number of hours you want to work per week = hourly rate.

This hourly rate is important. Even if it currently seems unfathomable, it is something that is going to turn the wheels of your brain in a new direction.

My hourly rate is $_________________

Are you shocked at your hourly rate?

We all know that you will run into some opportunities that will not be paid by the hour. However, I think this is a good reference point for cost-benefit analysis of future opportunities. If you are looking for an easy way to cost-benefit analyze opportunities, check out my guide for cost-benefit analysis.

Next time, we will talk about the second step, “Why?”.

If if you would like more information on my teaching, performances, or career building resources, please subscribe to my newsletter using the form at the bottom of the page.

The older and more cynical I got, the more I resented goal setting. I would pick up a self-help book or listen to an audio book and someone would say those two words. I would then have a very visceral negative reaction.

I was all about goals in high school and college. I was laser focused and I believed wholeheartedly in goals. I was a Music Education major, so my training was all about learning objectives and getting specific. My career seemed really black and white. I thought if you set goals and worked hard enough, things would go your way.

Then I got out of school and discovered that life is really messy. Psychology is very messy. Things don’t always go the way you plan. Life is not black and white, and hard work guarantees nothing.

Then, around six months ago, I read a friend’s article about setting long term goals and my perspective was profoundly changed. I figured out a few things.

Here are a few things goal setting is:

A blueprint for your brain, not unlike plans for an architect to build a house.

A tool to shape your values.

A way to discern the best options to move forward.

Something to refer to when considering a new opportunity.

Changeable and flexible as you age and experience life.

Here is what goal setting is not:

A guarantee.

Something to go after without the thought of the cost to yourself and others.

Something you failed at if you did not achieve it by X deadline.

One of the first conversations I have with a friend or client involves some form of the phrase “what are your goals?”, get big, state them in first person, and be specific.

In my experience, goals are the basis on which everything else is formed. If you set goals you will find your values, figure out your reasoning as to why you do things, and be able to build your career in the direction you want to see it go.

Recently, I wrote this step-by-step guide to help jumpstart your artistic career. Goal setting is the first exercise.

Next time, we will talk about the second step, income goals.

If if you would like more information on my teaching, performances, or career building resources, please subscribe to my newsletter using the form at the bottom of the page.

Years ago, a friend bought me tickets to see Billy Porter in Kinky Boots. It was a short, special run for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. After seeing the show, I became a huge Billy Porter fan. I love Billy Porter for a number of reasons. First, he is from my hometown of Pittsburgh, so I feel a serious affinity to him. Second, I love him for his courage. He chose to be himself in a business that wanted very badly to mold him to its standards. It took over 25 years for that to pay off in his career. Now he’s the star of the show Pose, and he is able to show up unabashedly on the red carpet in dresses.

A few days ago, I read an article where he said he stepped away from Broadway for thirteen years.

Thirteen years.

It made me think seriously about what I have gone through over the last year in my artistic life. I hit a serious burnout roadblock about a year ago. A lot was going on in my non-musical life and I could not understand why, seemingly all of a sudden, my motivation dried up. I had never been the type to burn out. Even the word “burnout” scared me. However, what I realized over the past year has made me a much stronger, understanding, and more resilient person.

If you are also going through something similar, I want you to know you are not alone in this journey.

For many freelance artists, burnout is not an option from a very practical standpoint. If you have never worked as a freelance artist, this is extremely hard to understand. For many years, if I wanted to eat or pay my bills, I had to work. Turning things down was not an option. The lack of understanding from most of the people around me made this worse. Then, around a year ago, I finally got a decent job for the first time in my life. I was finally paid well and in a non-toxic work environment. At this point, my motivation tanked.

I immediately got scared. I did not want to see performances beyond the ones my students were in. I had no desire to learn new repertoire. I was not interested in doing auditions. I had no desire to look for new students. The last thing I wanted to do was put on a self-produced recital or concert.

I had hit a wall.

This seemed odd to me. I had never had an experience like this. I had always been motivated to do things. I was always finding new projects to do. I finally resigned myself to the scary truth:

I was burned out.

I had spent over ten years working constantly and never having a minute to breathe, and it was all catching up with me. I thought burnout was far more overt. Something you could see and feel. I thought I would be doubled over from exhaustion, or something dramatic would happen. This was far more insidious. It was simply a lack of motivation. A complete lack of want.

Friends, please understand that this is a sign that you are burned out.

If you have hit this wall, here are a few things to consider that helped me over the last year:

Combat/question the negative self-talk going on in your head.

When we were cavemen, our brains developed to deal with the perils of life in the prehistoric world. We were born with a built in mechanism to save us called the fight/flight/freeze mechanism. I will save you the science, but I highly recommend Dr. Faith G. Harper’s book on the subject. Her description of what goes on in the brain is very easy to understand, and I find her risqué delivery very funny. The first thing that came to mind when burnout started for me were the words of all the people who scared me into thinking that a break was bad for my career. As I read on the subject, I realized that in order to win the battle with these voices I needed to combat what they were saying. I needed to question their authority and dig deeper. Who said these things? Does this still hold up? Who was the source of these thoughts? What hang ups did that person have about their own career or life?

The “shoulds”

Often I hear this referred to as “the tyranny of the shoulds”. Basically speaking, it is all of the things you tell yourself you “should” be doing. Now, I want to put a disclaimer on this section. Some things are simply socially acceptable. You should take a shower. I am all for showers so you do not smell terrible at work or other public places. However, the “shoulds” of your career are a completely different matter. The only “should” you should listen to is this: You should do what is right for you.

Self-care, or as I prefer to think of it, self-compassion.

Self-care is a big buzzword right now, and frankly the terminology bothers me. Self-care conjures a lot of images for me or self-indulgence. Not that there is anything wrong with being self-indulgent every once in a while. (I need a Snickers bar and pedicure from time to time like anyone else!) But, I don’t think that’s helpful in deep burnout. I am a fan of the idea of self-compassion as a route to true self-care. The woman who has written the definitive work on self-compassion is Dr. Kristen Neff. Her book on the subject is very long and cerebral, so unless you have a great interest in the subject, here is a quick visual summary. The basic goal is to talk to yourself as you would speak to a friend, and recognize that humanity, as a collective struggles with largely the same things.

Unplug, especially from social media.

One of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quotes is “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Social media is a great tool for networking, but can also breed feelings of inadequacy. Even though it’s an intense approach, I really like what Cal Newport has to say about Digital Minimalism. I have found that even a few days away from social platforms does me a great deal of mental good.

Take micro-actions.

I know the question in your mind is, “What is a micro-action?”. Eventually, I plan to write an entire blog about this subject, but for the purposes of this blog I will give a short description. A micro-action is an extremely specific small action that you can do today. For example, instead of “write blog”, a micro-action would be, “brainstorm blog for 5 minutes on a blank sheet of paper” or “post preview to blog on social media”. In burnout, when motivation is slim, doing small actions feels much more doable than tackling large projects.

Recognize that burnout is just information.

A few years ago I worked with a career mentor. Every time I got a rejection letter, or any other form of criticism she would say, “It’s just information.” It took awhile for this to seep into my brain. Burnout is really just information. It is your body and brain trying to tell you one thing:

Take. A. Break.

Now, I know is the toughest one on the list. I am a Type-A, go getter, rust-belt raised person. Hard work is in my DNA. I am a classic case of can’t-sit-down syndrome. However, trust me when I say this:

Forcing yourself out of a case of burnout does not work.

One of the toughest things about burnout is that you have to let it run its course. It took me a about a year to get back into writing about artistic careers, coaching new repertoire, and working towards personal and professional musical goals. Forcing yourself to try to do things will not work in your favor.

As a final thought, I want to talk about two quotes that have carried me through the past year. A few years ago, I went to lunch with a friend at a Met competition. At the time he lived in New York, and I was still in Pittsburgh. I was seeking his advice and he said something I will never forget:

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

It’s easy in our modern society to look at the overnight success of people and not see the years of sweat and turmoil leading up to it. Success can also be short lived, you never know when or if your career will peak.

I love this quote, and I have started to use it a lot with my students. I have seen many people leave the world of singing and come back years later. I have also seen people completely change careers or move to singing part-time.

So, my friends, find your path and do whatever feels right to you. You have the power to determine where your career and life are going to go.

A few days ago, I made a choice limit my use of Twitter and delete Linked In. I also significantly pared down the number of followers I have on Instagram and vowed to do another 30-day cleanse from Facebook. A lot of people do not understand what I am doing, so I am taking the time to post a blog about exactly why I chose to begin to substantially limit my presence on social media.

This has been an issue I have been concerned with for a long time. My parents have never had a presence on Facebook. They use Instagram sparingly. Other members of my family have completely walked away from all social media, or are merely disinterested. I have taken several breaks from Facebook or other social media in the past, but my thinking about the entire system is shifting. In order to explain this fully, I would like to take you back to my first grand exposure to social media, and my winding relationship with Facebook.

My History

I graduated from high school in 2006, the era when everyone flat ironed their hair and wore chunky shoes. The Bohemian look of the late 90s was still subtly in style, as were plastic bracelets and faux punk earrings. We all had a MySpace. For those of you who were pre-MySpace era, it was a similar platform to Facebook in many ways, but overall more simplistic. I have vague memories of a grouping of “top friends” and some semblance of a profile. Previous to the MySpace era we all had blogs on Xanga or Livejournal. 2006 was the very early era of social media. Those of us who were tech-savvy participated, but the word “addiction” crossed the minds of few. Text messages were costly. At sixteen I got my first phone, a slider (old school!). I was not allowed to text, only call. Since calling after 9pm was free, we all waited until after 9pm to call people and gossip about what happened at school that day.

I was very peripherally involved online. I definitely used AIM and MySpace, but my favorite leisure activities included singing along to 80s albums in an attempt to imitate rock stars. (This activity that proved helpful in my future career as a voice teacher and professional singer) and writing in my journals. I also made collages and enjoyed organizing things like books or jewelry. So, needless to say, social media was a major afterthought.

I remember one day at school my friend told me about that her older brother, a student at Penn State, had a Facebook. She said it was a “college thing”. I remember thinking, “Oh, cool it’s like MySpace only for college kids.” I remember finding a lot of my future classmates on MySpace, but Facebook was the prize my senior year of high school. At the time Facebook was an exclusive club. In those days you had to have a .edu address to get on Facebook, which also meant you had to be in college. We all wanted a .edu address simply so we could get a Facebook and be part of the new cool kids crowd. We wanted to be in the exclusive club. (In the movie, The Social Network, they talk about this phenomenon very briefly.)

Honestly, Facebook was a lifesaver for me in college. My first semester I worked in the library and Facebook acted as cheap entertainment in the boring off hours when I had finished my homework and shelved all of the loose books. It was a fun, social thing to click around on. This was prior to the era of the smartphone, and Facebook was only available to us on desktops or laptops. I would often head to my room after class to check up on people or message my friends, but I never remember spending hours on the site. Ever.

I don’t remember the exact date, but somewhere around my junior or senior year of college, Facebook began to shift. The period of college exclusivity ended, and people who did not have a .edu address where allowed to enter the world of Facebook. What was once this closed world of college students and old friends from high school, cracked open and allowed all sorts of people in.

I graduated in 2010 and was mired in the economy of the recession. I was stuck in my parents’ house for two years applying for jobs. Facebook slowly started to eat away at my self-worth, but I had no idea at the time. All I knew was that I was miserable and watched so many people have much better lives than me, while I was stuck in my parents’ house filling out job applications and obsessively updating my resume. I finally decided to go to graduate school in 2012 and I believe this was the beginning of the end for my social media relationship. In graduate school, I really felt a shift in everyone’s relationship to Facebook. It went from a relationship of fascination to a relationship of addiction. This was also the beginning of a lot of self promotion on the platform. It had been two years since I had been in college, and the entire culture around Facebook had changed. Teachers were on it. Some people’s parents were on it. Aunts, uncles, cousins, co-workers, and the random guy across the street were all on it.

After grad school, in 2015, I took a class on classical singer marketing. It was extremely helpful and educational class, but also the furthering of my very unhealthy relationship with social media. It was the beginning of my use of social media for my business and my self promotion as an artist. We were instructed to create social media business “pages” and also taught how to target our advertising. I remember thinking during this class, “Great! Now I know how to build a fan-base! This is fantastic!”, but as I became better educated, this began to wane.

Facebook proved to be very helpful in my move to New York a year later. I found my roommate on Facebook. I figured out which friends I had living in New York. When I chose to leave my steady job, Facebook was a very helpful tool to find work, clientele and resources, but this all came at a major cost.

Living in New York was a dream that I never really thought I would live, so I got much further than I expected, but I was noticing really adverse changes in my behavior. I would get cranky, upset, over-wrought. My anxiety, which had always been present but not debilitating, became a constant way of life. I felt like I was becoming less and less of myself. Something was wrong, and I really felt that one of the major issues was definitely social media.

The Research and Realization

One day, as I was clicking through channels I stumbled upon an interview with Jaron Lanier. I’m a huge fan of any kind of philosophy, and Jaron’s views on things regarding technology fascinated me. Later in the interview he began talking about his new book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Account Right Now. I love to read, but I am completely and totally cheap when it comes to books. Unless it’s a definite reference for me (or a musical score), I tend to put it on my holds list for the library. This book sat on my hold list for awhile, and when I finally got a chance to read it, I found the information both gratifying but also terrifying. It confirmed what I had known and been bothered by for years. Social media is destructive to our society.

Soon after I became more interested in this subject. I began to look into the work of Cal Newport . He is also not a fan of social media, but for more personal reasons than Jaron Lanier. His basic argument is that social media is destroying our capacity for concentration. His new book, Digital Minimalism, is on my holds list.

Finally, in the rabbit hole I went down listening to podcasts on the subject, I found Tristan Harris’s terrifying senate hearing. I encourage everyone to go to the link and listen to his talk. Some of the things he said both shocked and appalled me, and I feel like this did not get the press it deserved.

However, I remain conflicted. As a woman of the modern age, and an artist, I cannot downplay the impact certain spheres of social media have had on my life and career. I feel as if they have done some good, but I am beginning to greatly fear the implications of the bad things that will be coming from use of social media both personally and in society as a whole. In addition, the networking of social media is, in some ways, indispensable. This is why I chose to take a sabbatical from the site. The only app I am using is messenger.

For the time being, I still have a Facebook, however after the next thirty days, I may feel differently.

Energy has been something that I have been working on a lot recently, so it has been on the forefront of my mind.

A few months ago I made a life-changing decision to leave a steady job. This job had been something that I thought I had wanted. Something that really felt like it was going to be the answer to prayers. I spent a year and a half there, but it never felt right. I ended days feeling angry, resentful, and drained.

Then, in early November, an event occurred and opened a door where I saw I could make a choice. I could stay in a volatile, difficult, soul-draining environment, or I could take a leap of faith, figure it out, and move towards something better for myself.

I chose the latter. It hasn't been easy, but to be honest I feel like a totally different person. My days are not filled with guilt, anger, and misery. I'm not taking hour naps to refill my sleep debt every single day. My body feels better. I have energy to do things. I'm calm. I'm centered. I take long walks. I write blogs. I contemplate. I cook. I practice. My voice isn't shredded. I have space and time for myself.

The fact of the matter is, energy isn't positive or negative, it just is.

It can be directed in any way shape or form. Think about sleep debt. If you don't get enough sleep, you accrue a sleep debt. If you give your energy to something and don't refill the tank, you have the same issue.

There's a great line from an article a friend sent me from The Cut that states: "Actively choosing who you are and what you care about, outside of the limited confines of other people’s narratives about you, is what happiness is all about."

For a long time I was concerned about my call and using my call wisely. A lot of personal work and the work I have been doing with a mentor has broken that down for me. Sacrificing yourself to make other people happy is not a good way to make this work. If you are not coming from a place of joy, then you are not really doing the work of God. One thing that has really lodged in me lately is, "Don't do the work of God someone else is supposed to do because your ego wants a boost." Remember, we mirror each other. It's part of how our neurons are wired. This is why it is soul-draining to work with someone who is just phoning it in. We literally pick up on their energy. This isn't some woo-woo stuff. It's neurology and biology.

Doing self-care does not mean being lazy just to be lazy. it means filling the cup. Think of it like a bank account. Things you do take something out of you. In turn you have to fill the piggy bank back up or you will not be able to give to the next thing.

My mantra to myself lately has been: Get clear. Get focused. Get intentional. If you aren't clear about your energy the result will be unclear.

I was listening to a podcast recently where they talked about a study done about how the words you use to describe yourself, are the words another person is most likely going to use to describe you. You tell the world how to think and interact with you. Literally.

Here are some questions I have been consistently asking myself:

Is my energy going towards what I want or what I don't want?

How can I make the best use of my time in order to be a good steward of my energy? Note: One of my mentors just wrote a great blog post about this. You can read it here :)

What kinds of things bring me joy? What makes me miserable?

Is this the best use of my energy?

Can I give 100% to this thing, or do I need to fill my cup?

Some things I have started doing (everyone is different, but these are some things that are working for me):

So I made a big one this year. To get as far out of debt as humanly possible so I can throw down next audition season.

and, to be honest, the first month was kind of awful.

I took some seriously drastic measures in my finances, because I am so tired of money dictating my life and career. I'm an opera singer. I want to sing opera. I don't want to obsess over money in regards to that.

I started listening to Dave Ramsey's podcast to stay motivated. Honestly, most of it is him dishing some serious tough love.

Now I am ALL about loving yourself, but sometimes love is a "come to Jesus" talk. Sometimes that is the necessary thing that needs to happen. Sometimes you have to bust through denial. And denial is definitely one of my drugs of choice.

Now, the reason I say this is because I also want an opportunity to be generous. I can't do that if I fear not having enough. This is a basic spiritual practice. You give of your plenty, when you have plenty from a healthy place. I have never been in that healthy place.

I am not afraid of hard work, and I am not afraid of sacrifice. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. However, I definitely also know myself. When I get tired and weak, I need inspiration and fail-safes.

There is a great book I read a few years ago called "Grit" by Angela Duckworth. In it, she talks about the main way people become successful, and that is through this little thing called grit. I am determined to make this happen, just as much as I am determined to get roles, get on stage, and create opportunities to sing.

So friends, I will occasionally post about this journey. Not because I want pity, or to show off, but because I need to stay motivated. I know my end goal and I am tired of letting this little green, human invention dictate my life.

In 2000, when I was thirteen years old, Bon Jovi released a single called, "It's My Life." It cycled through the top 40 the summer between my seventh and eighth grade years of middle school. I fell in love with the song, and subsequently asked for the CD of their album, "Crush", for Christmas.

Although it is not my favorite Bon Jovi album, "Crush" marked a turning point in my musical development. I had taken a few years of piano lessons, sung in choirs, and spent three half-hearted years playing the clarinet. Something in that album flipped a switch in me and I began to take music seriously. I was thirteen, and I knew that this was going to be the work I would do for the rest of my life.

I was a really smart, competitive kid, and I wanted to be the best musician I could possibly be. I bought all the Bon Jovi albums I could get my hands on and proceeded to teach myself how to imitate Jon's vocal pyrotechnics. I proceeded to do this with other artists like Savage Garden, TLC, Alicia Keys ... really anyone. I tried to imitate the sounds of any and every singer.

I didn't start studying voice seriously until about two years later. Knowing what I know now as a vocal pedagogue, I'm glad my parents waited that long to get me voice lessons. In a strange way, I think that those years of grand experimentation helped me cultivate something really important: My artistic voice.

Imitation is part of learning. One of my many side gigs is teaching young Chinese students English. The first thing they have to do is directly imitate sounds and speech patterns. The step after that is to have them formulate answers to questions. A new ESL student cannot answer questions before they can imitate words. This is a simple fact of educational development.

Similarly, in music education, we always work to have students repeat phrases, and then we scaffold in call and response. It is the same basic ideology.

It makes sense that most of us begin our singing lives by becoming master imitators, because singing is a form of human communication.

In a way, singing is beyond speech because the singer communicates their innermost, vulnerable self to an audience. If you are a musician, chances are you are singing because you have something to say.

YOU. YOU. YOU. YOU have something to say.

It's easy to forget that it is your voice, both in physicality and philosophy, is the most important part in the whole picture. Remember, a teacher is an advisor. Someone who makes this communication easier, but YOU are the vessel. The job of the teacher is to make it as easy as humanly possible for someone to be themselves and artistically generate what they want to convey. You are the body, the vessel that holds the soul and voice that must be heard.

Communicate your true self in your music. There are rules and there are opinions. However, at the end of the day, who you are is non-negotiable.

One of my favorite authors, Brené Brown, has a great quote from an interview that I love: "I will not negotiate who I am with you."

This quote is something I repeat as a mantra often.

I love to write, think, and read. My great non-musical interests are theology and philosophy. For a long time, I did not see the connection between my love of these things and my music making. I would frequently feel guilty that I devoted just as much time to these curiosities and pursuits as I did my music. However, what I have found is that for me the two are not mutually exclusive. They are in fact part of my whole and what make me the musician that I am. I feel like it has improved my music, and my teaching tremendously.

So, my friends, find ways to make yourself more you. In doing this you work to become more of the musician and person you want to be.

When I was young, we had an old Hammond organ in our house. My Mom took organ lessons growing up, and at one point neighbors inherited an organ and bestowed it upon us.

I never actually learned how to play organ legitimately. But, as a child, I found it fascinating. It was this thing with lots of buttons that could make weird sounds. I spent hours putting sounds together and experimenting. When I was around 5 and started taking piano, I actually practiced on the organ. I didn't have an actual piano in my home until I was in high school.

I used to spend hours on the organ playing with the sounds and creating things. However, like I said, I never learned to play the instrument legitimately.

Because of this I never claim to know or understand how to play organ. It's not an instrument I understand in totality. Can I make sounds on it? Yes. Can I legitimately play? No. There is a difference between these two things.

In the book, The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle explains that there are two different kinds of skill building. He compares violin lessons to learning how to play soccer. Learning the violin is the building of a skill that involves building strong pathways in the brain. Learning something like soccer involves constant improvisation. The player must know how to move and coordinate in a moment's notice. This kind of knowledge and skill is different. It is an improvisatory skill.

In music, we must build BOTH of these knowledge pools. That is the only way you will understand music holistically. My high school voice teacher was a master at this. She taught us classical vocal technique, and then would turn around and make us improvise jazz or gospel in the same lesson. We knew when to walk the straight and narrow path and when to take a detour. Jazz music is all about breaking rules unless you are playing in a vamped ensemble where there is a soloist. Classical music is about sticking with the rules unless you are ornamenting a Baroque piece. Great musicians can switch between these two modes of thinking.

I personally believe that you do not actually understand a skill until you can successfully do both of those things. I work in the North Bronx as a middle school teacher. A lot of my students want to create their own music, however I impress upon them that you need to know the building blocks of music before making it. Otherwise it's like you are building a house out of mud. 21 Savage and Cardi B know what a steady beat is. Otherwise they would not be able to rap. Rap is all about staying in a steady beat, and that is an elemental aspect of music.

This is why classical music education has legitimacy. If you know the rules you can know how to break them. If you know how to break them you know how to create your own music.

Today I'm going to tell you a very personal story, but one that I think will shed light on two issues that are very universal in music making: gut instinct and performance anxiety. We will explore my story, and how I found these two things to be inter-connected.

I have a confession to make...

I can count the number of tests I studied for in high school on one hand. I was the kind of high school student who drove teachers completely crazy. I was smart, but a terrible procrastinator who hardly studied. I still graduated with a good GPA and did extremely well in college and graduate school.

*As a note, I actually studied in undergrad and grad school because I paid to attend those institutions...

Why did I choose not to study in high school? I did it because I was really in tune with my gut instinct.

It probably sounds really trite, and if my grades were worse I think my parents would have killed me, but it's the truth. I had really good instincts, and therefore was able to usually discern enough right answers on a test to get a decent grade.

So what does this have to do with music making?

Well, it has a lot to do with music making.

After I graduated from college I lost a lot of trust in my instincts. It really showed in my performances and technique. It became apparent that I was thinking about the music I was making far too much. These issues became pervasive and I formed performance anxiety for the first time in my mid-twenties.

For some people, performance anxiety is something they always live with. It's something they have the day of their first 5 year old piano recital and it doesn't stop for their entire lives. This was not the case with me. I was a child and young adult who had never struggled with performance anxiety. I was never afraid to put myself out there. I had very little fear. However, as a newly minted professional musician I was struggling with something that I had never understood or experienced before.

Because of my brazen personality, I completely denied that I was struggling. I told no one and put on the best game face I had. I still performed. I still did auditions. I still got through grad school. I still did all the things. But in the fall of 2015 it had crippled my ability to express in song so much that I realized I needed to do something. On the outside I appeared to be a successful, working musician, but on the inside I was tied up in knots.

It's a hard thing to describe, but I'm sure most people can relate to the general feeling. This is the point where art becomes a paycheck. You want it to be honest, but you know in your soul that it's not honest because you are constantly freaking out about whether or not it is "right". You are stuck behind a wall that you can't identify. It's internally frustrating, and people are depending on you to be vulnerable and produce something moving.

Two years ago I began the journey of unraveling the layers of junk I had built up to protect myself over many years. I am well on the other side of this mountain, with the one piece of advice I give to every student: "Trust"

Crespin turned to her in the masterclass and said, "My darling. You must trust."

What did she mean by that statement? I take it to mean trusting your gut instincts. Remember, your body knows how to play an instrument and how to sing. It's been taught to you for years. I always tell my students, "You come out of the womb screaming. Singing isn't far behind."

This also means giving yourself the space to trust yourself. Giving yourself the gift of a compassionate self-judge. If you are not getting a passage, take your nose out of the music for a few seconds. Just play it or sing it. Mess it up. Then go back and make whatever changes need to be made.

Remember, at the end of the day the goal of music is to move the audience and connect them to something greater. If you trust the force within, it will guide you to that connection.